A Leigh sexual predator who broke into a woman’s home and raped her as she slept collapsed yesterday when told he may have contracted HIV from her.
Richard Thomas, 27, Sandringham Drive, was jailed yesterday for five years and four months and ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register for life at Liverpool Crown Court after letting himself into the woman’s home in the middle of the night on July 20.
His victim awoke to find him raping her and according to prosecutor Harry Pepper ‘she froze and no words were exchanged. He pulled up his shorts and left’.
Thomas knew the woman and was aware that she had an illness but did not realise that she had HIV and will have to wait until Friday to find out the results of the test.
His barrister, Virginia Hayton, said: “It is his own fault, if he had not committed this offence he would not have placed himself in this position.”
Judge Mark Brown described his crime as ‘dreadful’ and that the attack had left his victim distressed and anxious.
The court heard that Thomas had started using cannabis at the age of nine and was put into care at 14.
He has been trying to contact his family but they want nothing to do with him and he will now be away from his partner, their young daughter and his two other children from previous relationships.
Picture courtesy of Nolene Dowdall via Flickr, with thanks.
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